"BlackBerry has a thriving ecosystem with BlackBerry 10." That's what CEO Thorsten Heins said this May at a developer conference before revealing that users had a choice of 120,000 apps from its still-young app market, BlackBerry World. The problem is that over a third of those apps come from a single developer. Yes, a Hong Kong-based company called S4BB has published just under 47,000 apps to BlackBerry World since launch. That's not a good sign of a "thriving ecosystem."

This is what happens when the technology press lets itself be dictated by companies. The companies were the ones who started touting quantity over quality when it comes to mobile application stores, and the press played right into their hands. In a statement to The Verge, BlackBerry confirms the issue, but states that it's not actually an issue at all. Of course they say that. They want to keep touting that number.

Companies wanted this to be a numbers game, and now it is. Go into any mobile application store, and 99.9% of the applications in it are crap. Comparing numbers reveals nothing. It never has, and never will.

What fascinates me about third party apps on phones is that most of the time, these seem only to exist in order to fix the issues of the underlying platform.

Take Instagram, as an example. I've been long wondering why people would want an app that merely duplicates the basic photo-editing capabilities of most modern cellphones OSs. Only recently did I find out that iOS's bundled photo editor was extremely crude, much more so than its cousins on other platforms. Now I know how this thing became popular.

If I take a quick look at the apps which I installed myself on my dying Android cellphone, I'll find an office suite and a PDF reader (because Android does not support common e-mail attachments properly), software to backup SMSs, calendar events and contacts without going through Google's servers (because you can't do that natively), a tool to flush the battery calibration data as it curiously tends to auto-corrupt over time on that OS, an app store that offers other payment options than insecure banking cards... Well, you get the idea.

The only things which I wouldn't expect to find pre-installed or available on a website are a language-learning app (because mobile SoCs and network connections are too underpowered for doing it on a website), a timer that makes ticking noises (because that's fun and reminds you that it's running), and an app that displays up-to-date timetables about French trains (which curiously aren't easily available on the SNCF website).

Looking at others' phones running various OSs, I'll find the same patterns : mostly functionality that should really be supported by the OS natively or done through a website, some stuff that can't be done online due to hardware limitations, a couple of gimmicks, and the native code equivalent of Flash games (because, you know, Flash player doesn't run well on phones).

On tablets, I see the point of third-party apps more easily, as they enable some tricks that cannot be trivially done using websites or bundled apps, such as image or audio manipulation or other moderately complex content editing. But on small-screen phones, is there a good reason for their existence? Or are they just a source of platform bugfixes, funny gimmicks, annoying "Hey, we also have an app!" pop-ups on websites, and endless number bragging contests between OS manufacturers ?

I think default apps should be "just good enough", because even that is more than most people need.

Third party apps can provide all the extras and power features for those who really require it. There is no need to fill up the memory of your device with so much stuff most people won't ever (or can't) use.

I think default apps should be "just good enough", because even that is more than most people need.

Third party apps can provide all the extras and power features for those who really require it. There is no need to fill up the memory of your device with so much stuff most people won't ever (or can't) use.

Which memory are you trying to save up here?

I'm pretty sure that you won't fill the multiple gigabytes of modern devices' mass storage with the typical OS-bundled apps, unless of course the OS is developed by Microsoft and/or has to support several decades of constantly deprecated frameworks and APIs.

As for RAM, it is true that it is a bit more of a scarce resource on lower-end devices with 512 MB and such. But I guess that if a little bit of thought went into app modularization, it would be possible to reduce the impact of unused feature to near zero.

Myself, the main drawback which I'd see to an iterative improvement of the OS-bundled apps, is that it would cost cost OS development time, which couldn't be spent on the next shiny feature. Users don't notice gradual polishing nearly as much as major changes, even if they also despise the bugs that such changes will inevitably bring.

Are you aware that Instagram is an entire social network with tens of millions of people? Its much more than photo editing (given that it doesn't even do that to a major extent).

Of course, it is also yet another photo sharing service. But I don't think this is the main reason why people started to use it initially, since they already had lots of other options for that available before. Think imageshack, Flickr, blogs, Facebook...

On the other hand, I've noticed that some iPhone users make quite a powerful mental association between editing photos on their devices and installing Instagram. So the software's basic filtering capabilities, as limited as they are, truly seem to be a strong selling point.

Most platforms don't give application developers enough power to truly extend the platform feature set in a seamless fashion (ie by not having to constantly hunt software in a crowded menu and learning a completely new and alien UI). They do make an exception for media sharing services, though, for some reason.

The main counterexample that survived to this day is Android, and by using it, one can understand why such a level of customization is forbidden on other platforms : as it turns out, most application devs are really bad at making quality system software.